Robotic Process Automation can be applied on processes which are repetitive in nature day in and day out. Let’s take a use case of a business function along with activities carried out by a department. Use-Case for RPA Procurement Department deals in procuring various kind of material into the premises of the organization like

• Inventory items
• Non- Inventory items
• Assets

• Enterprise Planning Engine (EP) generates Purchase orders.
• Purchase requisitions get converted to Purchase orders.
• Project requirement planning generates purchase orders.
• Manual Purchase order creation

• Raising of purchase requisition and converting them into purchase orders
• Paper based approval mechanism for procuring non-inventory items
• Directly creating purchase order in ERPLN procurement model.

• Creation of purchase orders for domestic materials
• Creation of purchase orders for importing materials
• Purchase manager for reviewing the purchase orders generated by team and following up with suppliers and freight forwarders on goods delivery etc.
• Negotiating with suppliers on payment delays etc.
• Generating vendor rating and distributing and many more
• Maintaining supplier relationship

General Challenges prevailing across organizations within the department to mention few

1. Internal order lead-time from creating a purchase order to getting it approved takes around minimum 2 days to maximum 5 days.
2. Data accuracy with which the orders get created. It varies from organization to organization; however, it could be around 80% on an average.
3. Volume of orders to be created/generated could be extremely as high as 500 to 1000 purchase orders in a day or more depending on the industry vertical.
4. Maintaining stronger supplier relationship and helping suppliers increase their product quality by giving inputs to suppliers.

We always get to hear, garbage in is garbage out during any ERP implementations. So, a lot depends on the quality of data fed into the system by human beings on daily basis.

Now that, we have fair idea on functions and challenges of procurement department, we will progress onto how these can be addressed at broad level.

How RPA is going to help in overcoming the challenges around the procurement department?

With RPA, we can automate creation of purchase orders in ERPLN, without human intervention thereby overcoming all the above-mentioned challenges

There are many ways in which we can trigger the automated solution to create purchase orders in ERPLN. Few ways are listed below a. We can use PDF attachments in email to read and create purchase order b. We can use file-based mechanism to read and create purchase orders

1. RPA solution can bring down internal order creation lead time by 60% and move it to next process.
2. With RPA solution, data entry accuracy at order level can be increased to 100%
3. With RPA solutions we can create as many as 100 purchase orders accurately in a span of 60 minutes.
4. Procurement managers and representative can spend more qualitative time with their suppliers and build strong relationship with them. Be productive in-terms of nurturing small suppliers to balance product cost and product quality effectively.

Technologies used for building RPA solutions:

There are many technologies available today to build RPA solutions; to name a few

1. UIpath
2. RPA Automation etc.

3. Other patented solution

   Reach out to us on connect@nicheBees.com for knowing further about our ongoing project references, costing and engagement models of using RPA on ERPLN